Ferlin Husky
Ferlin Husky was a country singer, comedian and guitarist from Missouri whose 1956 recording of “Gone” topped the country chart, reached No. 4 on the pop chart and is widely regarded as the first Nashville Sound record. His duet with Jean Shepard, “A Dear John Letter” (1953), and his “Wings of a Dove” (1960–61) were also country No. 1s, and as his comic character Simon Crum he reached No. 2 with “Country Music Is Here to Stay.” He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010.
Ferlin Eugene Husky was born on 3 December 1925 in Cantwell, Missouri, and grew up on a farm. He was to have been named Ferland, after a friend of his father’s, but his birth certificate read Ferlin. An uncle taught him guitar before he was ten, and on the family radio, tuned to KMOX in St. Louis, he heard Red Foley, Gene Autry and Bing Crosby. While working in St. Louis in the early 1940s he met a veteran of the Merchant Marine, and after Pearl Harbor he hurried to enlist; on D-Day he served as a volunteer gunner on a troop ship off Cherbourg.
After the war he sang in St. Louis honky-tonks and in the late 1940s went to California. Smiley Burnette, Gene Autry’s former sidekick, took him on a tour and talked him into the stage name Terry Preston. Back in California he worked the club circuit with Ole Rasmussen, Smokey Rogers and others and became a regular on Cliffie Stone’s Hometown Jamboree on radio and television, where he sang, did comedy and impersonations. His first records, as Terry Preston, were made around 1949, and by 1950 he was recording for 4 Star in Hollywood and writing songs for its publishing company.
As a disc jockey on KBIS in Bakersfield he invented Simon Crum, a rustic character based on the radio team Lum and Abner and on a neighbor from his youth, Simon Crump. At Bakersfield’s Rainbow Gardens he hosted family shows and children’s talent contests, where he met the twelve-year-old Dallas Frazier and steered him to Capitol Records. He also recommended Leonard Sipes to Capitol, played guitar on his early records and renamed him Tommy Collins.
With Cliffie Stone’s help Husky reached Capitol himself, recording for producer Ken Nelson in Hollywood from November 1952, still as Terry Preston, until Nelson advised him to use his own name. His first Capitol hit was “A Dear John Letter,” recorded on 19 May 1953, a Korean War recitation in which Jean Shepard sang the choruses and Husky spoke the part of a soldier whose sweetheart has married his brother; Fuzzy Owen, Tommy Collins and Lewis Talley played guitars and Bill Woods piano. It entered the Billboard country chart in July 1953, went to No. 1 and crossed to No. 16 on the pop chart, and the answer song “Forgive Me John” reached No. 4 that year. In 1955 he had three Top Ten records of his own: “I Feel Better All Over (More Than Anywhere’s Else),” “Little Tom” and “Cuzz Yore So Sweet,” his first hit as Simon Crum.
On 7 November 1956, at Music City Recordings in Nashville, he recut Smokey Rogers’s “Gone,” which he had first recorded as Terry Preston in 1952. Ken Nelson had Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires bring in a soprano, Millie Kirkham, and her voice and the Jordanaires’ over echo and a spare accompaniment, with Bob Moore on bass, made a record that went to No. 1 country and No. 4 pop. Husky had worked on the televised Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri, in 1955 before joining the Grand Ole Opry, and “Gone” took him onto network television: Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, where he also guest-hosted, Kraft Television Theater and The Ed Sullivan Show. The television work cost him his Opry spot. He also had roles in films, among them Mr. Rock & Roll (1957), Country Music Holiday (1958) and The Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966). As Simon Crum he recorded “Country Music Is Here to Stay” on 20 August 1958 at the Bradley Film and Recording Studio, and it reached No. 2 on the country chart in 1958–59.
“Wings of a Dove,” a gospel song by the RCA producer Bob Ferguson, was cut at the Bradley studio on 24 May 1960, with “Next to Jimmy” on the other side of Capitol 4406, and in 1960–61 it went to No. 1 country and No. 12 pop. Husky kept charting on Capitol through 1972, with Top Ten records in “Once” (1966–67) and “Just for You” (1967–68), moved to ABC in 1973 and had his last chart single in 1975; in all, fifty-one of his records made the country chart. He toured widely at home and abroad. Around 2005 he recorded The Way It Was (Is the Way It Is) in Martindale, Texas, for the Heart of Texas label, with Leona Williams and Justin Trevino producing.
Husky received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 and was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010. He died on 17 March 2011, at 85.
